Tuesday, November 30, 2010

East opens 1NT in 4th seat. I bid 2 hearts and partner bids 2NT which I assume is asking for my minor. I bid 3 clubs. West gets in there with 3 spades, partner bids 4 clubs and East goes to 4 spades which gets passed out.

Partner leads the A of hearts.

NORTH♥A

EAST♠ K 5 2♥ J 5 4♦ A Q J 8♣ A 8 3

SOUTH♠ Q J♥ K Q T 8 3♦ 5 4♣ Q 7 6 4

West

North

East

South

Pass

Pass

Pass

1NT

2♥1

Pass

2NT2

Pass

3♣

3♠

4♣

4♠

All Pass

1Cappelletti

2Relay

A-4-T-7. Partner shifts to a club, so hearts are likely 5-4-3-1. 2-A-4-J. Declarer draws trump. 2-Q-A-4. 9-8-5-J. I'm in, and I bet partner still has the T of spades. I cash a heart. K-2-5 of clubs-5. And another. Q-6-9 of clubs-J. 3-9-3 of spades-K of spades.

Declarer goes back to clubs. 3-6-6 of spades-T. And now a diamond through. 6-2-8-5. Ruff another club back, and finesse diamonds again. Declarer is up. Down 1.

NORTH♠ 8 4 3♥ A♦ K 7 3 2♣ K T 9 5 2

WEST♠ A T 9 7 6♥ 9 7 6 2♦ T 9 6♣ J

EAST♠ K 5 2♥ J 5 4♦ A Q J 8♣ A 8 3

SOUTH♠ Q J♥ K Q T 8 3♦ 5 4♣ Q 7 6 4

Professor Jack disagrees with my heart signal at trick 1. I played the T because he yells at me for not playing high enough and now I play high enough and he yells at me for playing too high. He would have played the 8 and with any other partner I would have played the 8 as well. I just played the T to please him.

He then disagrees with my club signal, saying I should encourage from Q764 after dummy wins the A. My concern is finding an entry to give partner a ruff so I think encouraging should show the K, which is why I played low. I could be wrong though.

On the replay my hand bids 2 hearts which is natural. This causes West to get in with 2 spades and partner to pass, leading to them playing 2 spades. My chair signals with the 8 and therefore has the high heart on the 4th round of hearts. This will let his partner keep a trump which should help them take an extra trick. Only problem is North ruffs anyway, with the 4, and dummy overruffs with the 5. So they end up making 3.

Monday, November 29, 2010

My all-time most viewed post is this one where I detailed possible plans for getting one of the realm first feats of strength for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. Some of those hits were from the same few people who read the rest of my posts, but some people actually got here from the outside world likely expecting help and instead were treated to a bunch of drivel about what I might want to do and not a lot about how I would do it.

Well, if any of those people end up back here I have a "treat" for them. I got tipped onto the fact that you can likely do cooking in less than an hour and decided to look into it further. I'll detail the steps needed here, but the window to get on board is steadily closing.

Why is that? Well, it turns out they actually enabled the Cataclysm cooking and fishing dailies in the shattering patch. The fishing dailies don't matter at all but the cooking ones sure do. The new dailies award new cooking tokens which are used to buy recipes or meat and can be stockpiled before the Cataclysm launch. (They also award one cooking skill so you can save one up in advance.) Most of the dailies award one token, but one of them gives two (currently the active one on Vek!)

Now, for the most part the new recipes fall into one of 3 categories for our purposes.

They require skill 450, go yellow at 465, green at 477, and grey at 490.

They require skill 475, go yellow at 490, green at 497, and grey at 505.

They require skill 500, go yellow at 515, green at 520, and grey at 525.

Finally, existing recipes from the Wrath era can take you all the way to 475 if you work at it, though they start green and require spices each so you'd have to have a real stockpile and spend a lot of time at it. Certainly good enough to beat anyone who isn't trying to twink it out but has no chance against someone going optimal speed. Fish feasts from Wrath go grey at 465 but actually stay orange until 455 so they're quite feasible for a few skill points.

Assuming you're going whole hog you need to buy 3 recipes, one from each category above. They each cost 3 tokens, and the tokens are soulbound, so you need to have 9 tokens on your main when Cataclysm launches. Counting today there are exactly 8 days left before Cataclysm launches, so you need just one doubler to get there. (If you're going the Wrath to 475 plan then you only need 6 tokens which will be good enough if no one else on your realm caught on in time.) Note this does include the day you log in (dailies reset at 4am, game comes up at 3am) but if your realm has a favourable timezone you may be able to get around this. I don't. As an aside, you want to save that last daily for after you've trained to go above 450 so you get the free skill point, and probably want to save it for skill #500 or #525.

You also need to have the cooking hat from the Dalaran dailies. Someone with the hat will beat someone without the hat guaranteed since it pretty much triples to quadruples your cooking time.

Ok, so we have our hat and our recipes and our free bonus skill... How are we getting the mats to get the rest of the skills? Well, for 2 of the new cooking awards you can also buy a box of meat. Each box of meat contains between 2 and 5 of a random Cataclysm meat. There are 9 such possible meats that can be pulled out of the box, of varying uses. Yes, I know, you need all your awards to buy the recipes. Your alts don't, though. Your guildies don't. People willing to make a quick buck certainly don't. The recipes are BoP, the tokens are BoP, but the meat can be traded. Anyone who is both level 10 and has at least 1 cooking skill can do the dailies, buy the boxes, and mail you the meat. What are the kinds of meat and what can they do?

Basilisk "Liver" - min skill 500

Blood Shrimp - min skill 450, min skill 475

Giant Turtle Tongue - min skill 475

Crocolisk Tail - min skill 500, min skill 500 (thanks Blizzard)

Delicate Wing - worthless for our purposes

Toughened Flesh - worthless for our purposes

Dragon Flank - min skill 500

Snake Eye - min skill 450

Monstrous Claw - min skill 450

Personally I'm doing the daily on 7 alts (and may level 2 more characters to 10 in order to bump that number up). I expect to get about 12 tokens per character (I started 2 days ago before checking on the feasibility of the whole plan just in case) which is 42 boxes of meat. So I'm likely to end up with around 15 of each meat type which is clearly not enough since I need to get 25 skillups per recipe. I looked at the AH this morning and the meat was going for 200G a pop, which is a little extreme. Hopefully I'll get lucky on a couple types of meat and can borrow/buy/steal some from some friends to get to the needed amount...

But what is the needed amount? Well, to get from 450 to 465 is 15 and then I need another 10 skill from a yellow recipe. Probably that's only 12 or so, but to be safe I'd want at least 20, so I need 35 of the first tier meat.

To get from 475 to 490 is 15. Another 7 at yellow and another 3 at green is going to be in the 25 range to be safe I'd think, so 40 of the second tier meat.

To get from 500 to 515 is 15. Another 5 at yellow and 5 at green is even rougher, probably in the 30 range.

Plus, if you're going all out to get something you really want to safety the contract, so I'd really want to add on an extra 10 in each category. Nothing would suck more than to do all this prep and end up stuck at 499 skill desperately begging people for turtle tongues. You'd still be fine if you're the only one going for it, but if someone else planned better you're sunk. (Note this would be a good time to cash your saved up daily quest for +1 skill!)

So, ideally, I would want...

45 Blood Shrimp OR Snake Eye OR Monstrous Claw

50 Blood Shrimp OR Giant Turtle Tongue

55 Basilisk "Liver" OR Crocolisk Tail OR Dragon Flank

Remember you can get some early skill from the fish feasts (and the first 5 are guaranteed so no need not to use them) so really you only need 40 of the first tier meat. (Note since I can only afford one recipe per tier I have to get all 55 as Liver or as Tail, not a split.)

All told I think I can hit max cooking in about 5 minutes assuming I have the meat in my inventory in advance. This seems totally worth going for and like it won't really hurt going for realm first fishing either. Time to beg for meat I guess!

Sunday, November 28, 2010

East opens 1 club and I preempt 2 spades. West jumps to 4 clubs, partner bids 4 diamonds and East passes. What in the world does 4 diamonds mean? It can't be constructive since the opponents have points for game so I'm thinking it has to be a long suit of his own. Since my suit is so terrible I'm fine playing in his, so I pass. West doubles for penalty which gets passed to me. I pass again.

East leads the A of clubs.

NORTH♠ K J♥ J 4 3♦ A K Q 9 7 6 2♣ 3

EAST♣A

SOUTH♠ Q 9 8 6 3 2♥ K 8 7♦ 3♣ J 7 2

West

North

East

South

1♣

2♠1

4♣

4♦

Pass

Pass

Double2

Pass

Pass

Pass

1Weak

2Penalty

Assuming a 3-2 trump split he has a spade loser, a club loser, and 2 or 3 heart losers. I have 8 or 9 tricks if I can win a heart trick. At any rate, lets see what they do. A-2-4-3. East shifts to a spade. 4-2-A-K. And a club back. 6-2 of diamonds-8-7.

Might as well draw trump and see what's up. A-4-3-5. K-8-3 of spades-T. Q-J-J of clubs-5 of clubs. Now what?

I can play a spade to board and overtake in the hopes the T is now stiff. If it's true, I'm up. Or I can cash the J of spades, finesse up to the K of hearts, and if East has the A of hearts I make when the T of spades is now doubleton.

Well, lets play a spade. J-T of clubs-? Turns out spades are 4-1. I can overtake and ruffing finesse for the T of spades. Then if the K of hearts is an entry I can take 2 spades, 1 heart, 3 trump, and the 4 tricks already in for just in. But the same is true if I just duck the spade, so I might as well do that. J-T of clubs-6-7. Might as well try the heart... 3-9-K-A. 5-4-T-8. Q-8-2-J. And I'm up. Down 2, doubled.

NORTH♠ K J♥ J 4 3♦ A K Q 9 7 6 2♣ 3

WEST♠ A T 7 5♥ A 5 2♦ T 5♣ 9 6 5 4

EAST♠ 4♥ Q T 9 6♦ J 8 4♣ A K Q T 8

SOUTH♠ Q 9 8 6 3 2♥ K 8 7♦ 3♣ J 7 2

Professor Jack disagrees with my 2 spade bid. My suit isn't good enough to preempt so he wants me to bid ONE SPADE instead. My terrible 6 count isn't good enough to preempt but is good enough to overcall? Are you insane, Jack?

He also wouldn't have cashed the J of spades and would have drawn more trump first. Maybe you can set up a squeeze of some sort?

On the replay my hand only bids 1 spade. Somehow this makes West and North slow down and they end up playing 3 diamonds undoubled. They lose the same tricks for down 1.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

West opens 1 club in 4th seat. East responds 1 heart and I double. West bids 1NT, partner bids 2 spades, and East goes to 3 hearts. West continues to 4 hearts which partner doubles. I lead the J of diamonds.

WEST♠ Q 8 4♥ K 6 5♦ A Q 3♣ K T 6 3

SOUTH♠ A T 6 5♥ 9♦ K J T 7 6♣ 9 8 5

West

North

East

South

Pass

Pass

Pass

1♣

Pass

1♥

Double1

1NT

2♠

3♥

Pass

4♥

Double2

All Pass

14-5 Spades, 4 Diamonds

2Penalty

J-Q-5-4. Declarer shifts to spades. 4-3-K-A. I go back to diamonds. T-A-2 of hearts-2. Partner cashes the A of clubs. A-2-5-3. And then shifts to a spade. 9-J-5-8. Declarer draws some trump. 3-9-K-7. 5-J-A-6 of diamonds. And back to spades, as declarer somehow has a 3rd spade. 2-6-Q-7. Partner bid spades with 3 small?

Dummy now leads a club. 6-7-4 of hearts-9. Declarer is now forced to play a diamond for me. 8-K-3-4 of clubs. Maybe we can take another trick if partner can overruff dummy's 6 of hearts so I return another diamond. 7-6 of hearts-Q of hearts-9. Partner exits a club. Q-8 of hearts-8-T. Declarer has another trump. Down 2, doubled.

He also disagrees with my opening lead. He wants me to lead partner's 'suit' and cash the A of spades.

On the replay my hand passes twice, but then finds a 2 spade bid after the opponents have bid 1C-1H-1NT-2D. West goes to 3 hearts, North makes the 'preemptive' 3 spades bid which gets passed out. Defense doesn't draw trump so declarer gets to score all his little spades on a cross ruff. Down 1.

Friday, November 26, 2010

West opens 1 club, partner cuebids 2 clubs and East jumps to 4 diamonds. 2 clubs should be Michael's, showing 5-5 or better in the majors so we have an 11 card spade fit. We are red on white though, so I don't think jumping to 5 spades is automatic. Assuming my goal is to keep them from their making minor suit game I'm trying to keep them from getting 400 points, so even down 2 is too many. 4 it is.

West bids 4NT and now they're heading for more than game. Maybe I should have stuck my neck out. East only has one A. West settles into 6 diamonds which gets passed out.

I'm on lead and hope partner has the A of hearts. If he does then I can get a ruff and set them, so I lead the 8 of hearts.

WEST♠ 3♥ Q 7♦ A K J 7♣ A K T 5 3 2

SOUTH♠ J T 8 7 6 4♥ 8♦ T 3♣ J 9 6 4

West

North

East

South

1♣

2♣1

4♦

4♠

4NT2

Pass

5♦3

Pass

6♦

Pass

Pass

Pass

1Michaels

2Blackwood

31 Ace

8-7-K-A. Looks like our 1 spade trick probably went away with that lead since they can likely draw trump, cash the Q of hearts, cross to hand, and pitch the 3 of spades on the J of hearts.

Declarer does start by drawing trump. 2-3-J-8. 7-5 of spades-Q-T. Then a heart. 3-4 of spades-Q-2.

But now clubs. K-8-7-6. 2-Q-5 of diamonds-4. Then declarer ruffs a heart, ruffs a club, ruffs a heart and his clubs are high. Making 7.

NORTH♠ A K Q 9 5♥ K T 9 4 2♦ 8♣ Q 8

WEST♠ 3♥ Q 7♦ A K J 7♣ A K T 5 3 2

EAST♠ 2♥ A J 6 5 3♦ Q 9 6 5 4 2♣ 7

SOUTH♠ J T 8 7 6 4♥ 8♦ T 3♣ J 9 6 4

I can console myself with the knowledge that I'd have probably lead a spade against 7. I can berate myself for not putting more though into 5 spades off the hop though. I didn't pay enough heed to partner's 5 hearts which mean I had at most 4 losers (his remaining 3 minor cards and a heart, maybe 2 trump I guess if their two spades are AK in one hand?) and could just cross ruff hearts and clubs.

Professor Jack disagrees with my club spot play. The 6 isn't high enough for him and he wants me to burn the 9 (which could be relevant) to signal even. Screw that.

On the replay the auction is identical. My hand leads a heart so they also make 7.

I went back and tried bidding 5 spades. West just goes to 6 diamonds on his own.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

I open 1 spade in first chair. Partner responds 2 hearts with both opponents passing. I bid 2NT and partner goes to 3. West leads the 2 of clubs.

NORTH♠ Q ♥ Q J T 4 2♦ Q 4 3♣ A K T 4

WEST♣2

SOUTH♠ K 9 8 7 6♥ K 7 6♦ A K 7♣ 7 3

West

North

East

South

1♠

Pass

2♥

Pass

2NT

Pass

3NT

All Pass

I have 3 diamond tricks and 2 club tricks for sure. I can easily brute force at least 3 hearts (4 unless they split 5-0) and certainly 1 spade. Clubs are 4-3 so I might even be able to get a 3rd club trick, too. Loserwise I just have the two aces and maybe 2 clubs so I should be set. I think I should duck the first club since I don't think it can hurt and it might give me time to set up my spade for trick 10 before they set up both clubs. 2-4-J-3. East shifts to a heart. 5-K-A-2. And now a diamond. 6-3-T-K.

Ok, now I'm in and I have 8 more tricks to cash. There are 10 tricks to come though, and I can easily set up a 9th for me without risk so I play a low spade. 6-2-Q-A. I'm up. Making 4.

NORTH♠ Q♥ Q J T 4 2♦ Q 4 3♣ A K T 4

WEST♠ J 3 2♥ A 9 8♦ 9 6 5♣ Q 9 5 2

EAST♠ A T 5 4♥ 5 3♦ J T 8 2♣ J 8 6

SOUTH♠ K 9 8 7 6♥ K 7 6♦ A K 7♣ 7 3

Professor Jack disagrees with my 2NT bid. He doesn't want me to skip a biddable suit and wants me to bid 2 spades. My spades are pretty mediocre so I don't see any reason to bid them a second time. He then disagrees with passing 3NT. Apparently partner's response guaranteed 5 hearts so I should have gone to 4 hearts. I donno, even knowing he has 5 hearts I'm not sure NT isn't the right place to be.

Finally he disagrees with my club deck at trick one. He says it might not work out as expected. I was certain it would, though. It couldn't hurt and could help since it puts East on lead now.

On the replay my hand bids 2 spades which is alerted as forcing with fewer than 4 hearts and 10-14 points. North jumps to 3NT and my hand pulls to 4 hearts. They lose just the 2 aces for up 1.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

East passes in first chair. Jack had a very similar hand recently and opened it 3 spades despite only having KQJxxx. Maybe if my offsuit K wasn't stiff I'd go for that. More likely I'd still just open 1 spade. I guess I'll just have to deceive partner a little and open 2 spades. West doubles and partner jumps to 4S spades which gets passed out.

West leads the A of hearts.

NORTH♠ A T 4 3 2♥ J 9 4♦ J 4 3♣ K Q

WEST♥A

SOUTH♠ K Q J 9 6 5♥ 8 7 6 3♦ K♣ 8 3

West

North

East

South

Pass

2♠1

Double

4♠2

All Pass

1Weak two

2Possibly preemptive

Well, I have 3 heart losers, a club loser, and a diamond loser and there isn't a darn thing I can do about it. And since it turns out West has all 5 high cards he just starts by cashing them all. Down 2.

NORTH♠ A T 4 3 2♥ J 9 4♦ J 4 3♣ K Q

WEST♠ 8♥ A K Q♦ A Q T 9 5♣ A J 6 2

EAST♠ 7♥ T 5 2♦ 8 7 6 2♣ T 9 7 5 4

SOUTH♠ K Q J 9 6 5♥ 8 7 6 3♦ K♣ 8 3

Professor Jack disagrees with my bid. Somehow my hand isn't suitable for a weak two and he wants me to pass.

My seat passes on the replay and West opens 1 diamond. North bids 1 spade, South cuebids 3 diamonds, and they settle in 3 spades. Which is pretty obviously down 1.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Partner opens 1 club. East overcalls 1NT (16-18, no 5 card major). I have nothing at all to say.
West bids 2 clubs Stayman. Partner passes, East bids 2 spades, and West jumps to 3NT which gets passed out. I lead the 9 of clubs.

WEST♠ 9 6 2♥ J T 7 3♦ J 5 3♣ A K 2

SOUTH♠ 8 5 4♥ Q 9 4♦ T 9 8 6♣ 9 8 3

West

North

East

South

1♣

1NT

Pass

2♣1

Pass

2♠

Pass

3NT

Pass

Pass

Pass

1Stayman

9-K-4-7. Seeing dummy it looks like I have a heart trick and nothing else. Partner has 12-14 points and needs to get 4 tricks out of them somehow. I don't like our chances.

Declarer moves on spades. 2-J-Q-4. And back to clubs. 6-3-A-5. And spades again. 6-3-T-5. And clubs again. J-8-2-T. Q-8 of spades-3 of hearts-5 of hearts. And now spades again. A-6 of diamonds-9-K. (I guess that spade pitch was as stupid as I thought it was before I made it.) 7-8 of diamonds-3 of diamonds-6 of hearts.

Now declarer starts on diamonds and we need the rest. 2-9-J-Q. 4-7-T-5. Guess I have to break hearts. 4-7-A-2. Declarer has the A of diamonds and the K of hearts for up 1.

NORTH♠ K J 3♥ A 8 6 5♦ K Q 4♣ T 5 4

WEST♠ 9 6 2♥ J T 7 3♦ J 5 3♣ A K 2

EAST♠ A Q T 7♥ K 2♦ A 7 2♣ Q J 7 6

SOUTH♠ 8 5 4♥ Q 9 4♦ T 9 8 6♣ 9 8 3

Professor Jack disagrees with my opening lead. Apparently from 983 I'm supposed to lead the 8, not the 9. Huh. I wonder why he says that.

The auction is the same on the replay. My hand leads the 8 of clubs which somehow makes declarer play differently at trick one. He wins in hand and then goes up to dummy in clubs from which he attacks hearts, letting South win the Q. His second time on board he finesses spades, but he's not getting 4 spade tricks this way. Except for some complete inexplicable reason declarer cashes the J of clubs and North pitches the K of spades! Making 4.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Worst 11 count ever? Partner opens 1 diamond in second seat as both opponents pass. I bid 1NT and West gets in there with 2 hearts. East raises to 3 hearts. If I double here is it penalty? It feels like it should be and I'm not sure that's such a good idea. They're taking at most what, 5 hearts, 1 spade, and maybe 1 trick in the minors since partner has to have 12 points somewhere. So are they getting 2 ruffs? I doubt it. Yeah, lets double. It gets passed out. Partner leads the A of clubs.

NORTH♣A

EAST♠ A 8 6♥ T 8 2♦ A 9 6 5 2♣ 5 3

SOUTH♠ K Q J♥ Q J♦ J 8 7♣ J T 9 7 2

West

North

East

South

Pass

1♦

Pass

1NT

2♥

Pass

3♥

Double1

Pass

Pass

Pass

1Penalty

A-3-2-4. Partner shifts to a trump. 3-2-J-A. Declarer attacks diamonds. 4-T-A-7. And now spades. 6-J-5-3. I think I should continue drawing trump. Q-K-7-8. Back to spades. 2-7-8-Q. Now what?

If spades are 5-3-3-2 and hearts are 5-3-3-2 then I can give partner a spade ruff. Alternatively if spades are 4-3-3-3 then declarer is setting up to pitch his club on board and I should return a club before partner's trick goes away. That feels better to me. J-Q-K-5. Partner forces declarer to win his A of spades, so it turns out spades were 4-3-3-3. T-A-K-4.

Declarer now plays a diamond from board. 2-8-4 of hearts-3. Declarer cashes the 13th spade. 9-8 of clubs-5 of diamonds-7 of clubs. Declarer has all trump left. Making 3, doubled.

NORTH♠ T 7 3♥ 7 3♦ K Q T 3♣ A K 8 6

WEST♠ 9 5 4 2♥ A K 9 6 5 4♦ 4♣ Q 4

EAST♠ A 8 6♥ T 8 2♦ A 9 6 5 2♣ 5 3

SOUTH♠ K Q J♥ Q J♦ J 8 7♣ J T 9 7 2

Professor Jack disagrees with my 1NT bid and wants me to bid 2 clubs because I have 11 points. Technically true, but man those are a bad 11. He also dislikes the penalty double which I guess was a tad aggressive. Finally he disagrees with my Q of hearts return during the play and would have returned a club.

On the replay my hand bids 2 clubs which allows partner to compete to 4 clubs over 3 hearts. This causes them to go to 4 hearts which is down 1.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Based on Mark's comment to one of my drafts from last weekend I decided to run an 8-4 draft today with every intention of drafting poison if I could manage it. I used to have a Marsh Viper/Fire Whip deck way back when Weatherlight first came out and have had a soft spot for poison ever since. Here we go...

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Man, what a terrible 6-5 hand. I can't justify opening at the 1 level with this. Do I want to preempt and risk missing a heart game? No. So I pass. West opens 1 spade, partner passes, and East bids 2 diamonds. Maybe I should have preempted after all. I hope cuebidding diamonds will show the other two suits, so I bid 3 diamonds. West makes a penalty double, partner passes and so does East. I run to 4 clubs. West bids 5 diamonds, partner makes a penalty double, and East retreats to 5 spades. I pass. West goes on to 6 spades. Partner doubles again for penalty. East passes and now I have a conundrum...

Why is partner doubling? Clearly everyone thinks my 3 diamond bid wasn't showing hearts and clubs and showed a good hand with diamonds. I have no tricks for partner here, can he take 2 on his own? If not they score up 1680. I can go down five and make IMPs in that case. Can I take 8 tricks in clubs or hearts? Only if partner has a lot of hidden support. I guess I pass.

Partner leads the A of clubs.

NORTH♣A

EAST♠ Q 9 8 6 4♥ Q J 5♦ K Q 8 2♣ J

SOUTH♠♥ K 9 4 3 2♦ T 4♣ Q 9 7 5 4 3

West

North

East

South

Pass

1♠

Pass

2♦

3♦

Double1

Pass

Pass

4♣

5♦

Double2

5♠

Pass

6♠

Double3

All Pass

1Penalty

2Penalty

3Penalty

A-J-7-2. Partner shifts to the A of hearts. A-5-9-8. Good thing I didn't sac! Partner continues hearts. T-J-K-7 of spades.

Turns out we only lose 3 tricks if I sac because partner has both a double fit with me and an 11 count. Why did he pass over 1 spade?

Professor Jack disagrees with my 3 diamonds bid. He wonders what I had in mind and would have chosen 2NT. Then after I got doubled in 3 diamonds he would have pulled to hearts, not clubs. Finally he disagrees with my signal in clubs. He wants me to encourage since I have the Q and therefore I should play the 9 instead of the 7.

I have a few issues with that. First, I shouldn't encourage at all since dummy is now void in clubs. Maybe I should play high to show the K so he doesn't have to worry about pitches but this signal should be something else. Second, the 7 is high! (I knew he wanted to know about my Q for no good reason so I did signal encouraging...)

On the replay my hand never bids. They have a nice passive auction and end up in 4 spades which easily makes up 2. (North tried to cash the K of clubs giving declarer a ruff and sluff. He pitched his only heart.)

I tried playing around and it turns out both 2 spades and 3 diamonds are naturally somehow. 2NT is unusual and if I bid it I end up having to choose to pass or sac over 6 spades undoubled knowing partner has good heart support. (He voluntarily bid hearts twice.) I think I probably give him choice of sacs by bidding 7 clubs. I end up down 3 doubled which is a loss of 4 imps instead of a gain of 13.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Wizardry V was a game I had on the Super Nintendo when I was a kid. It was a 1st person view dungeon crawl style game where you built a party of 6 adventurers and then explored a dungeon. Every so many steps you'd encounter monsters, kill them, and level up. Pretty standard RPG fare, right?

Well, one of the things with the game was your party wasn't fixed. You rolled up a bunch of characters in the tavern and made a party from 6 of them, but you could always go back and roll a new character and mix/match. Decide you really do need a thief? No need to restart the whole game, just make a level 1 thief and have him tag along for a while. Eventually he'll level up enough to be useful!

One of the quirks of the game is there wasn't really an easy way to resurrect dead characters. One of your 6 guys dies early on? Lug his corpse back to town, visit the tavern, and reroll a new dude to replace him. Alternatively you could pay a bunch of money to the temple and they'd rez him for you. Or at least, they'd cast the rez spell. It had a decent chance of failing. A failed rez didn't just mean your character remained dead. No, it meant he got reduced to ashes. You couldn't cast rez on a pile of ashes, sadly. Clerics (either high level in your own party or in the temple in town) could cast a super rez spell for a ludicrous amount of money to bring someone back from ashes. Hopefully. Sometimes that would fail too, in which case your character was lost forever. Oops.

The 'best' part is what happened when your whole team died in the dungeon. Their corpses and all their stuff just stayed where they died. Want to rez them? Better bring a new team into the dungeon to drag their corpses back to town. Oh, but it's not quite that simple, since corpses occupy party slots still. So you'd need to take five new characters down and drag back the corpse of one of your old party members. Rez him (hopefully!) and sub back down to 5 people to go back for the next guy.

Just to be clear, in order to get your 6 high level characters back you need to roll 5 new characters and level them to the point where they can succeed where your initial 6 failed. Not just to the point where they might succeed but where they will succeed 6 times. Yeah. Oh, and unless you remembered where you died you were screwed. You had to go back to the exact right square and search for their corpses. Rage quit for a week or two and coming back wasn't really feasible. Generally when this happened I just stopped playing.

But eventually I sat down and beat it. I lost my whole party several times on that play through but it turned out after you build a second team to save the first team once it's not so daunting to do it again. I didn't have 6 characters so much as I had 12 and I made sure to be really really careful when doing a corpse run. (Maybe I had more, I don't really remember the specifics. There was a weird aging mechanic too so sometimes you had to cycle out a guy anyway.)

Imagine if the tavern in that setup didn't just have level 1 characters. Imagine if when my team of level 10 guys died I could go pick up 6 new level 8 dudes from town. Spend a little time leveling them up and I can go rescue my level 10 corpses. My adventure gets set back for sure, but the scale isn't nearly as bad. I don't need to invest a full amount of time getting back on top, just 10-20% depending on where my team died. A penalty, but not a crippling one.

Relating to yesterday's topic, my single player World of Warcraft game hates permanently losing a guy because I have to reinvest from scratch to replace him. My multiplayer game hates it, but not as much. The 'tavern' here is full to the brim with vaguely comparable replacements. Personality clashes, strategy training, and the risk they have strafing as a major part of their rotation certainly still exist so there's still a pretty substantial penalty for losing a raider but it's not as crippling as having to start straight from scratch. If you have a good reputation as a guild and have made decent progression then your odds of getting decently skilled and geared recruits goes way up. (Back in TBC we were able to recruit a lot of decent people cross-server because we were fairly decently progressed. Wrath it was a lot harder since most people thought 25 mans were more important than 10 mans. We'll see in Cata if the stigma goes away from that direction or not.)

As such, I think the risk of random deaths is less of a factor than worried about yesterday. Random absences definitely still are and you want to avoid having to cancel raids due to insufficient people but proactive recruiting should mitigate a lot of the risks from having people quit.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

I used to play a lot of tactical RPGs back in the day. (Vandal Hearts, Final Fantasy Tactics, Suikoden Tactics, Disgaea, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, etc...) Typically in a game like this you get to choose how your experience is distributed amongst your characters because whoever you take actions with gets the xp and the people you leave on the bench get nothing. Frequently you'll have a 'main character', often the one only plot relevant character you get to name. I develop an attachment to these characters which means I tend to use them more than the average character. This means they get more xp, which means they get more powerful than my average character. Which means when I get to harder fights I have to keep using them. The rest of my team is massively underleveled relative to the current content so if I want to win I have to bring in the big gun.

In Disgaea in particular I've tried to play the game with a balanced team. I've tried to level people equally but it never works out. I always end up with my favourite character taking more of the actions which means they're the only one who levels up with means they're the only one who can take the actions. I took to taking time out after every story act to level the rest of my team on the leveling map but the end result was still that when it came down to crunch time I still only used my favourite character.

In a single player tactical RPG that can even make sense. In Disgaea in particular for equal time spent leveling I can have a bunch of equal dudes or I can have one dude who blows them all out of the water. Even in a game with a more sensible leveling system the optimal play is still to power level one dude. With one caveat, which is that you can always bring that dude along on every fight...

In Romance of the Three Kingdoms (I only played part 3 but I assume the rest were similar) you were trying to conquer ancient China. You could take over one of the premade factions or could start your own in a neutral city. You could even play with other players as I remember my brother and I starting on opposite sides of the map and playing for days and never really interacting. At any rate, it took a turn to walk between two cities on the map, so once you owned a reasonable chunk of the map one army was no longer good enough. Stack your best dudes in one spot and you could beat anyone in your path but your opponents would take two cities from your backdoor for every one you took from their front. In order to actually win you needed to develop a few good armies rather than one awesome army. (Here you didn't really get xp so much as you provided them with more and better troops, but the theory still holds.)

So all your eggs in one basket is the 'best' way to play in Disgaea but an even distribution is the 'best' way to play in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Something I've been trying to quantify recently is what's the 'best' way to go about playing in World of Warcraft?

What do I mean? World of Warcraft is a multiplayer game and barring multi-boxing you can only level one guy at a time anyway. Obviously you should put your effort into that character. But I'm not talking on the micro level of an individual character. I'm talking on a macro level of a raiding guild. Ignore that there are actual people behind these characters for now. Abstract that all away. You have a finite number of pieces just like in Disgaea or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. You have a finite amount of xp entering the system, though in this case it's purple loot and familiarity with encounter mechanics to be gained instead of a flat xp number or a number of archers. How should you set up your team to tackle 10 man raids? (My guild was a 10 man guild in Wrath and will be one again in Cata, so this is what I think about.)

Assuming no other constraints and that this is just a tactical RPG then clearly you just want to level up 10 dudes. Some fights want 3 healers and some only want 1 tank but mostly you want 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 6 DPSers. So I'd set my team up to have 2 tanks and split the tanking gear evenly between them. I'd have 2 healers of different gear types and split trinkets/weapons evenly between them. I'd have 6 DPSers of a variety of gear types and make one of them have a healer offspec. I'd want their mainspec to be a caster so they could reuse gear easily but give them a high priority on offspec stuff before any other DPSer. (Shadow priest would work, ret paladin would not.) I'd pick one of the two tanks to be the DPS guy and give him DPS gear over the other tank and both healers. I'd never change roles, so one tank is always the guy who is in the Abom and the other always tanks Putricide, for example.

This way I'd maximize encounter mechanic familiarity by reducing change. I'd maximize gear by reducing overlap and by splitting it as few ways as possible. (Likely I'd want one of my two tanks to be a feral druid to split tanking gear along type lines as well. And likely wouldn't want a rogue at all as a result.) In this way my little team would be ready for the hardest fights with as few trips through the power leveling map as possible. Just like in Disgaea, I don't want to spend more time on Cave of Trials, Stage 3 than I have to.

Clearly this wouldn't work in World of Warcraft without an insanely dedicated group. In a single player game your main tank doesn't go to Vegas for a week leaving the other 9 people picking their noses. Either you go to Vegas yourself and don't play the game at all or you stay home and have access to all 10 of your characters. There's no risk of a DPSer deciding he wants to play with other people and silently transfering to another server like a dork. Can we enhance our model here in some way to deal with these constraints?

Well, having to essentially start a new character from scratch to join with our powerful team is bad. If I can't reliably beat the hardest fights with my 10 pimped out dudes how can I possibly win with 9 pimps and a chump? If this is likely to happen then I want to have a contingency plan in place from the start. Grab an extra character of each type and rotate them all in equally. This certainly slows down my optimal path to killing the hardest stuff but makes so I don't just have to scoop when one of my characters permanently leaves.

Though honestly I'd have to ask if I'm playing the Manders RPG here. Why do my characters randomly leave in the middle of the game? I'd actually just level 10 guys and then stop playing for good when one left if I couldn't make progress with 9. Maybe I'd add an 11th guy and rotate around my DPSers (biggest pool of people so less watering down of the gear amongst them and increased chance the character death would hit this pool). But if I was playing Disgaea and was using Laharl exclusively and he up and left I'd turn the game off.

But wait, permanent death isn't the only option. In actual World of Warcraft people show up late. Or they miss an individual night with short notice. Maybe their internet went out. Maybe their computer gets so hot even frozen peas won't save it. Maybe they come down with the flu.

Which reminds me of the Bloodbowl league we ran at Chateau Monterrey back in University. I played the halfling race which only had two possible characters: halflings and treants. Halflings were arguably the worst units in the game. They had the least strength of any character. They had the least armor of any character. They had close to the lowest speed in the game and merely average agility. They had a couple special abilities that were quite useful and were incredibly cheap (good since they died so very easily) but they were not good. Treants were amazing. Second strongest unit in the game, the highest armor, and the worst movement and agility. Also useful special stats. But you could only have 2 of them on your team and they had a crippling drawback: a sixth of the time they just wouldn't show up. I had a bench to draw from, but the bench was more halflings. Frankly, any game where a tree sat out I couldn't win. It was a terrible feeling, and if I was taking it seriously I probably would have quit playing it as a result. (Well, and I could spent an awesome level up roll to remove the drawback. I got lucky (1 in 6 chance) and removed it from both trees pretty early on. It helped that trees earned a lot of xp for clubbing things.)

At any rate, back to World of Warcraft. I can't roll doubles and remove the chance of getting sick from any of my characters and I don't want to quit, so I need to come up with some other solution to the problem. The only solution seems to be to have a sufficiently large bench which have sufficient gear, skill, and experience levels to fill in when needed. Swapping in a halfling for a tree doesn't help but if I was allowed to have 5 trees on the roster but only 2 of the field at once that would be ok. Each tree would be worse so my odds of winning a specific championship game goes down (assume I need 2 high level trees to win) but my odds of winning any individual game - and of having fun - go up. The people earning world firsts in World of Warcraft have the commitment to go gung-ho with a super small dedicated roster but if I just want to have fun with my friends and kill everything a little slower then adding bench spots and splitting the gear and playtime around works ok.

One final problem though, which is that we have actual people behind these characters. They aren't just extensions of me with a random number generator deciding if they show up or not. In a single player game I'm happy as long as I get 10 dudes and a chance to win. In a multiplayer game I don't need to keep myself happy, I need to keep everyone happy. Everyone has their own motivations and their own restrictions on what will keep them happy.

Personally, I want to play the whole night when I start playing. Swapping in and out doesn't interest me (if I'm not in then I want to go do something else not hang around on the chance I might get in later). I want to play as many nights as possible, but committing to 100% attendance ends up making me unhappy. I'll get tickets to a hockey game, or get sick, or have a friend in town and just want to play Le Havre instead. I want to have the flexibility to be able to blow raiding off when convenient but also want it to always be there when I want to play. For the most part I always want to play so going with a 100% plan tends to be a good way to maximal happiness but when something else strikes and I can't take the time off the happiness plummets. (It's like I'm Adam's avatar from The Sims when he vistited Tom P's heart shaped house and watched Tom's avatar make out with Adam's virtual wife... I just want to sit at the bar and drink my low happiness bar away. If I drank, anyway.)

At any rate, if it came right down to it I'd almost be fine if raids didn't happen when I didn't show up and always had exactly 9 other people when I did show up. I would be if I was completely antisocial (I'm more avoidant than antisocial really) anyway. But I'm not and they wouldn't stick around if I was. So while I'm fine taking all the loot and practice and just screwing everyone else if I take off, well, it just can't happen that way. But what's the solution? If I was playing a single player game I might just accept that the guild shuts down if a tank quits but that's neither fair nor acceptable to the other people.

But what's the other option? I can see the argument for having 3 tanks and evenly rotate them in. A nice, even split of gear and practice. But that means only playing two of three nights. I didn't keep any stats from this last expansion but I've got a feeling I played a lot more than two of every three nights. I know back in TBC that Amaranthea and myself were in the 98% attendance range... Imagine 13 people with that attendance. Assuming their absences are independent (not true since days like Thanksgiving or Lounge Day will have linked absences). You'd always have 10 people for every raid which would be great, but you'd average sitting 2.74 attendees every raid. That's a little less than 80% actually getting to play when people show up. Is that good enough?

What about if people only show up 90% of the time? Well, then you need to cancel 3% of raids and you're down to sitting 1.74 attendees per non-cancelled raid. Better, but still not really good enough. And we're losing raids.

80%? Now we're losing a full quarter of the raids. We're only sitting .79 attendees per non-cancelled raid and everyone gets to play more than 90% of the time they show up.

What's the upshot here? Well, I think it's that you can't build a 10-man raid from 13 identical people. People either won't get to raid enough of the time that they show up or too many raids will get cancelled to not enough people showing up. You need some people with different expectations. People who don't mind showing up and not getting to play a good chunk of the time. You need diversity. Not just among classes, specs, and buffs, but amongst personalities.

Now he leads the 5 of spades. I just can't see a way to take more than my 2 aces, so I take them. Making 5.

NORTH♠ 9 4 3♥ K 8 5♦ J 4♣ T 8 7 3 2

WEST♠ K J 2♥ Q T 7 4♦ K T 6 3♣ J 6

EAST♠ 8 5♥ A J 9 3♦ 9 8 2♣ A K Q 5

SOUTH♠ A Q T 7 6♥ 6 2♦ A Q 7 5♣ 9 4

Professor Jack disagrees with my opening lead. He wants me to give up on my Q of spades right off the hop and lead the A.

The bidding is almost the same on the replay. The only difference is West goes straight to 4 hearts over 3 hearts instead of detouring through the useless 3NT. My hand starts by leading a club. Declarer wins on board and finesses North out of his K of hearts, so they make 5 as well.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

I did this 8-4 draft on Sunday as well, immediately after the disaster that was the Ur monstrosity. At Sky's request I doubled the size of all the pictures but they're really not fitting well I don't think. Does anyone know if there's a way to resize the post width on an individual post but not on the entire blog?

Thanks to Matt I can now get around the stupid Magic Online bug which prevented me from replaying some games so I can give more details about all the games even a couple days later. I also commented on my picks themselves.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Partner opens 3 spades. I have a 21 count so clearly partner has preempted me. Are we more likely to make 3NT or 4 spades? Can we make 6 of either one?

If partner's spades are rock solid then we have 12 tricks with choice of two red finesses for 13 tricks. If partner has either red K or the club J then we have 6 offsuit tricks and make 7 spades if he has a solid suit and 6 spades if he has a mostly solid suit. If he has a lot of spade losers we're sunk though.

Now, I think bidding 5 spades here should ask him for his trump quality and ask him to bid 6 spades with a solid suit. Does Jack think that? What would he take 4 clubs to mean? How about 4 hearts?

I'll replay the hand afterwards to find out, but for now I think 5 spades and hope is the right play. It gets passed out. East leads the 4 of diamonds.

NORTH♠ K Q J T 8 2♥♦ K J 6 5♣ 8 3 2

EAST♦4

SOUTH♠ 3♥ A Q 6 4 3♦ A Q 3♣ A K Q 7

West

North

East

South

3♠

Pass

5♠

Pass

Pass

Pass

I have 13 tricks but am missing the A of spades so I will only make 6. I might get held to 5 if they get a ruff. 4-A-7-5. I draw trump. 3-5-K-A. East returns another diamond. 9-3-8-J. Spades are not 5-1 so I make 6.

NORTH♠ K Q J T 8 2♥♦ K J 6 5♣ 8 3 2

WEST♠ 9 5♥ K 9 8 5 2♦ T 8 7♣ J 9 4

EAST♠ A 7 6 4♥ J T 7♦ 9 4 2♣ T 6 5

SOUTH♠ 3♥ A Q 6 4 3♦ A Q 3♣ A K Q 7

Professor Jack disagrees with my 5 spade bid. He says it's too passive and I should think about slam. Clearly jumping to 5 spades didn't mean what I thought it did. The claim is it shows 3+ spades and 18+ points. What? How can that bid both make sense and not be a slam going move? If he'd thought it was preemptive that would be understandable, but to show a monster and not be a slam try of some kind? Weak. (And did you notice Jack didn't have 7 spades for his 3 spade bid?)

4 clubs would show control in clubs for spades. Doing so gets partner to cuebid hearts. If I then cuebid diamonds he cuebids hearts again. If instead I cuebid clubs again he cuebids hearts again.

If I bid 4NT he would show 1 keycard, and then I can ask for the Q of trump with 5 diamonds. He would bid 5NT showing the Q of trump and one outside K. At this point I'm forced to try 6 spades though without information about the J and T of trump that's very risky. I guess if his preempt has to be solid this is a good play.

On the replay North starts with a mere 2 spades. South bids 2NT asking for a feature. North shows a diamond card. South heads to 3NT where they sit. This seems unconscionably weak. North solidified your diamond suit, so if you can find a trump suit you have slam somewhere. If I had to bid on in my seat I think this South has to as well. They make 6NT.

I decide to fudge the deal and see just how weak partner will go and open 3 spades. He will on KQJ842. He will on KQJ542. He will not on KQ6542. He will not on KQT542. He will not on KQT987, which seems better than KQJ542 in a lot of ways.

If he actually bids what I think he should and start with only 1 spade (10 points, 6-4, void?) we end up in 6NT which makes trivially. (Though only because he follows up my 2H bid with 2S. If he follows up with 3D then we end up in 6 diamonds which also makes trivially.)

Sunday, November 14, 2010

There was an online PTQ today which ended up crashing. I wish I wasn't surprised that Wizards still hasn't figured out how to run big tournaments online without crashing. They decided to hand out a lot of free packs to people and hope they wouldn't complain too much, so I went 6-3 and got 9 packs for my efforts. I was unsatisfied and wanted to play more Magic, so I hopped into an 8-4 draft that went a little worse than yesterday's draft...

Saturday, November 13, 2010

I'm going to give something new a try here. Apparently Magic Online now outputs the details of your draft to a text file and a Starcity Games columnist wrote a converter to add images and such. I don't really like the way it looks here, unfortunately, so I may write my own converter or dig further but I figure I'll at least throw this one up for feedback.

I make no claims of being an expert at Magic anymore having played very sporadically for the last few years but I did a few drafts to prepare for Grand Prix Toronto a couple weekends ago so I'm not totally in the dark here.

Friday, November 12, 2010

East opens 1 no trump in third seat. I bid 2 clubs showing a single suited hand. West jumps to 3 no trump. I likely have 2 outside entries and a long suit to set up. I don't think I should double but I bet I can set them if partner has anything of use at all in clubs and maybe even if he doesn't. I lead the 7 of clubs.

WEST♠ A T 8♥ J 7 5 2♦ J 6♣ K T 9 6

SOUTH♠ K 6 3♥ K T 6♦ 4♣ A Q 8 7 4 3

West

North

East

South

Pass

Pass

1NT

2♣1

3NT

Pass

Pass

Pass

1Cappelletti

7-6-2 of spades-J. So much for partner having any help at all in clubs, eh? Declarer even attacks clubs himself, as he possibly should. 2-3-9-3 of diamonds.

Now declarer shifts to a diamond. J-9-5-4. 6-8-K-6 of hearts. Q-3 of spades-2 of hearts-7. And now a heart. 4-K-5-3.

If declarer just needed 1 club he could have taken it, so I hope it doesn't hurt to give it to him now. I take the A first just in case, though. A-T-7 of spades-5. 4-K-T of diamonds-8 of hearts.

Declarer now pounds out a heart. 7-9-A-T. And now he ducks a diamond. 2-8 of clubs-8 of spades-9 of spades. I guess he isn't so much ducking a diamond as cashing one. And now the A of diamonds. A-Q of clubs-T of spades-5 of spades. And now a spade. Then declarer has to lead to partner's Q of hearts. Up 1.

Professor Jack disagrees with my spade pitch. He thinks I should give up on clubs, I guess.

The auction takes a drastic turn for the worse. My hand also overcalls 2 clubs but it's natural instead of Cappelletti. West hits him with a penalty double which gets passed out. Defense then manages to mangle the contract completely throwing away tricks left and right. They still manage to take it down 2. In retrospect I can't get a better result even seeing all 4 hands, so I guess they didn't actually mangle it. East had pretty much the best hand he could have for his 1NT opener and they still only set it 2, so I question the penalty double, at least...

Thursday, November 11, 2010

I open 1 spade. Partner responds 2 diamonds with the opponents passing. I get my second suit in there with 3 clubs. Partner retreats to 3 spades. I continue on to 3NT in case partner was just giving a preference with 2 spades. He bids 4 spades. West leads the 2 of hearts.

NORTH♠ K 9 7♥ A T 9♦ J T 7 5♣ A 5 3

WEST♥2

SOUTH♠ A J T 3 2♥ K Q♦ 9♣ K Q 8 6 2

West

North

East

South

1♠

Pass

2♦

Pass

3♣

Pass

3♠

Pass

3NT

Pass

4♠

All Pass

I have 4 spades, 3 hearts, and 3 clubs. I can feasibly gain a spade trick by picking up the Q. I can gain a club trick or two by establishing that suit. I only have 1 or 2 losers, being a diamond and the Q of spades. They didn't lead a diamond so I can pitch it on the hearts. I've got a good feeling about making 6 here, so I wonder how we should have gotten there. At any rate...

2-9-4-K. Assuming I'm trying to make 6 I need to pitch my diamond before I lose a spade. What are the odds that I get ruffed when I try to pitch a heart? They have 8 hearts between them, so they'd need to split 6-2. Since the opponents didn't preempt and he lead the 2 of hearts I'd put the odds of that happening at none. So, lets set up the heart. Q-5-T-7. Now I need to get to board. I'm thinking the safest bet is just to do it in trump, so I go for that. 2-8-K-4.

And now, the heart. A-6-9 of diamonds-3. I now have a play for 13 tricks, by picking up the spade Q and having clubs split 3-2. Or I can cash the A of spades and then run clubs, hopefully making it so if someone ruffs in they do so with the Q. Then I can ruff my 4th club and score my 5th when they split 4-1, letting me score up 6 spades, 3 clubs, and 3 hearts.

Regardless, any play starts with the 9 of spades, so I play it in case East has to play the Q. 9-6-?. They have the Q and 5 left. I wish I knew how they carded in the trump suit. At any rate, if I was in 7 then I'd have to finesse here. Assuming I'm in 6 though, my winning scenarios with each play are:

Hop w/ A - make 6 whenever spades split 3-2 and clubs split 4-1. Make 7 whenever West has Qx and clubs split 3-2. Make 6 whenever clubs split 3-2.
Finesse - make 6 whenever East has the Q and clubs split 4-1. Make 7 whenever East has the Q and clubs split 3-2. Make 6 whenever clubs split 3-2.

So I always make 6 when clubs split 3-2. Assuming I don't care about the overtrick because we're playing IMPs and not mps so I don't need to care about the odds of making 7 instead of 6. So the difference is when clubs split 4-1. Hopping the A loses to 4-1 spades. Finessing loses to Qx or Qxx in West. 4-1 is 28%, 4-1 East is thus half that, or 14%. 3-2 is 68%. West having the Q happens in 10 of those 20 combinations, but we can exclude one of them since East has played 2 low spades already. So we're at 45% of 68% which is 30.6%.

30% remains bigger than 14%, so we should pop the A. This seems wrong, so I hope someone double checks that for me. West shows in, so I attack clubs. They both show in, so I make 6.

NORTH♠ K 9 7♥ A T 9♦ J T 7 5♣ A 5 3

WEST♠ 8 5♥ J 5 3 2♦ K Q 8 4♣ J 9 4

EAST♠ Q 6 4♥ 8 7 6 4♦ A 6 3 2♣ T 7

SOUTH♠ A J T 3 2♥ K Q♦ 9♣ K Q 8 6 2

Turns out clubs were 3-2 and East had the Q of spades so I can make 7 on a non-diamond lead.

Professor Jack disagrees with my 3NT bid. Apparently partner's 3 spade bid guaranteed 3 spades and wasn't just a preference and therefore I should have bid 4 spades. I still like 3NT since I want to get my heart stopper across.

He then disagrees with popping the A of spades. Maybe I made a math error but more likely Jack didn't care about making 6 specifically.

On the replay my hand bids 4 spades over 3 spades which gets passed out. Declarer wins the first trick and immediately finesses spades into East. East wins the Q of spades and returns a diamond. Making 5.

So the question is, can we actually find the slam? I think my 3NT bid should have shown my values were in spades, clubs, and hearts. Partner should be really happy that there's no wastage in diamonds and that we likely have hearts, clubs, and spades locked up. I guess he has no real reason to assume I have a stiff diamond but that's pretty much the only thing between us and 12 tricks I think?